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Keywords: Sign Language

  • RELIGION

    What difference does it make now that Mary MacKillop is a saint?

    • Frank Brennan
    • 14 October 2011

    Mary visited Rome as a young religious woman when she was being persecuted by local bishops for being too independent. She got a good hearing from the Pope and great assistance from Fr Anderledy who became the Superior General of the Jesuits. If only Bishop Bill Morris could have received the same sympathetic hearing.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Testing nature vs nurture

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 29 September 2011
    5 Comments

    During the 1970s, a chimpanzee named Nim was placed with and raised by a human family, with the aim of seeing whether he could learn language. On a larger canvas the experiment asked the question, 'how much can we make Nim human?'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Chance meeting with an inventor

    • James Waller
    • 20 September 2011
    2 Comments

    Hans shows me an invention which magnifies letters for his failing eyes, so that still he may read, so that still the winds may turn the bronze art coins of his perception. Cobweb-like sculptures dream upon some shelves, poetry is the wing of his bird-like speech.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Former terrorist pres a hard sell for Irish voters

    • Frank O'Shea
    • 20 September 2011
    5 Comments

    When it comes to leopards changing spots or terrorists turning into statesmen, former IRA chief-of-staff Martin McGuinnes is up there with Mandela and Mugabe. His entry into Ireland's presidential race on the weekend is significant, as the rest of the field is desolately dull.

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  • RELIGION

    Malaysia solution pros and cons

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 July 2011
    30 Comments

    The Malaysian solution is unprincipled, but it might just work — stopping the boats. If other countries try to replicate it, we will have to tear up the Refugee Convention and start again. And the plight of unaccompanied minors transported from our shores to Malaysia will be on our conscience. 

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  • RELIGION

    Human rights and Christian lawyers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 18 July 2011
    5 Comments

    When I appeared on Q&A with Christopher Hitchens, a young man asked whether we can 'ever hope to live in a truly secular society' while the religious continue to 'affect political discourse and decision making' on euthanasia, same-sex unions and abortion. Hitchens was simpaticao. I was dumbstruck.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Parable of the unwelcome strangers

    • Greg Foyster
    • 20 June 2011
    22 Comments

    One day a stranger knocks on the door. 'Help!' he shouts. 'The people in my house are trying to kill me!' Instinctively, you reach for the door handle. A wrinkled hand, old yet firm, grabs your wrist. You look up and see your landlord, a bald man with thick rectangular glasses and bushy eyebrows.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we swear

    • Philip Harvey
    • 06 June 2011
    6 Comments

    Fining people for swearing is silly. We can no more control what people say than we can hold the wind, or even a very large fart. Victoria's swear-fine laws are likely to be used either as threat or reality on those who can least afford the fine and cannot fight back.

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  • RELIGION

    Pope models condom conversation

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 November 2010
    14 Comments

    Pope Benedict's remarks on condoms have offered rich pickings. Speculation arose whether his statement heralds the collapse of Catholic condemnation of contraception. But the Pope's words were less significant for their content than for their style.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Supermarket and cemetery conversation

    • Brendan Ryan
    • 09 November 2010

    At the IGA, the woman at the check-out peppers her speech with Darl. Her friendliness, the way she packs my plastic bags, greets me two days later – a connection Facebook can’t provide.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Burke, Wills and ... Rudd?

    • Brian Matthews
    • 14 July 2010
    6 Comments

    Burke and Wills have long since attained the kind of heroic status Australians seem inclined to assign to catastrophic failure. But perhaps, in mid 2010, we might see their expedition's story as being more about the strains, perils and transience of leadership.

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  • RELIGION

    Speaking for country, speaking for self

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 July 2010

    Fr Frank Brennan's address to the Melbourne College of Divinity Centenary Conference, Trinity College, University of Melbourne, 6 July 2010.

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